He then progresses to the perception of Asians in general, and Filipinos in particular, in a specifically gay sexual context. This is treacherous territory indeed. It contains many racist suppositions, manifestly untrue of the vast majority of individuals, but nonetheless widespread among the many Westerners who believe that masculinity consists of being a metaphorical killer in bed, and as often as not an actual one elsewhere.
The Catholic undertow to much Filipino gay life is also discussed. One important example the author gives is that of the traditional Santacruzan pageant. He witnessed a gay version of this normally religious event -- which celebrates the discovery of the True Cross by the Roman Emperor Constantine's mother Helena -- staged in New York in 1992.
Everything was transposed from the sacred to the sexualized, he relates, until the very last stage of the ceremony when suddenly the ritual figures of Helena (Reyna Elena) and the Empress (Emperatriz) appeared exactly as they would have in the Philippines, complete with garlands of flowers and an antique crucifix. The gay world was suddenly replaced by Catholicism and laughter at a profane parody by a wave of religious nostalgia.
New York is typically seen by these Filipinos as being "American" both in the sense that everything is bigger, more plentiful and wider ranging, and also in the sense of being defined by products that can be bought and consumed. "Gay life in New York was like a big vending machine," as one of the interviewees put it.
While he was conducting these interviews the author was also working for two agencies helping AIDS patients. It wasn't easy to keep emotion out of either work, he says. He was so moved by one man, soon to die, that he didn't feel he could include his case in this book. The patient insisted that he did. At least that way he could finally become a celebrity, he said.
Humor is pervasive, though not entirely confined to Filipinos. "We've had 300 years in the convent and 30 years of Hollywood," one laconic observer says of his country's history. And the author tells the story of being accosted with a friend, who was in fact Latino, outside a gay bar by a drunk with the words "I have never seen two Oriental homos before." The Latino friend preserved his cool and, quick as a flash, replied politely, "Excuse me, but we prefer the word
`ornamental.'"
There's a lot of academic material in Global Divas -- cross-references, engagement with post-colonial theory and the like. But more than half the book consists of discussion of the experience of Manalansan's 58 interviewees, and there's plenty there to interest the general reader, especially one alert to the style of one of Asia's most flamboyant peoples.
RSS